Related Picture A smaller view (14 in. x 18 in.) with a different foreground was owned by Agnew in 1921. A picture of the same dimensions as the present work, with greater foreground depth, is dated 1806 (collection of J E Brennan; repd by R M Clay, Ibbetson, 1948, Pl. 81).

Background
Painted during Ibbetson’s residence in the neighbourhood, 1799–1806. The 1806 view of Grasmere, mentioned above, is taken from White Moss, south of Sykeside (the farmhouse where the Wordsworths were then living) and shows Allan Bank (where they moved in 1808). The composition of No.8 is less elaborately contrived than this view, which it probably precedes, and it lacks the somewhat artificial crowding of the foreground. Ibbetson settled at Ambleside in 1799 and in 1802 moved to Troutbeck (both of which are within a few miles of Grasmere), leaving for Masham in Yorkshire in 1806.